How Michael Whatley’s Senate run is being upended by a sex offender’s picnic

Welcome to another edition of Washington Secrets. Today, we take a look at the Republican Party in North Carolina, where officials simply can’t bring themselves to admit they made a mistake in allowing a convicted sex offender to become a leading fundraiser, and we finally have a date for the end of the American war in Iran …

For the past six years, conservatives in North Carolina have made the Down East Judicial Picnic a crucial stop on the fundraising circuit. Attendees pay up to $1,500 to chow down on hors d’oeuvres and rub shoulders with state supreme court justices and officeholders.

What some of the attendees knew was that the host, Harvey L. West, had a dark past.

In 1999, West was a police officer in a small town near the Outer Banks when he was arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls — two were aged